A new global forum, meeting for the first time this week (13â€“15 June), will gather scattered research on sustainable consumption and production from countries across the world, as well as from journals, reports and grey literature, to consolidate existing findings and discuss the agenda for future research.

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The Global Research Forum on Sustainable Consumption and Production also hopes to forge new research partnerships to help tackle difficult issues relating to consumption and production.

"There's a lot of science, technology and innovation to be researched on sustainable production and consumption," said Philip Vergragt, professor emeritus of technology assessment at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands.

Vergragt was chairing a session at the Forum on Science, Technology and Innovation for Sustainable Development in Brazil this week (12â€“15 June), ahead of next week's UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20).

"We need to stake stock of what we know in terms of research. The research is splintered among different disciplines and different networks," he said.

"We are only beginning to scratch the surface of is the systemic nature of the problem. There's a lot of research necessary."